


The Sleeping Beauty of Stark Kingdom

by Mercurial_Georgia



Category: Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 05:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11799693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercurial_Georgia/pseuds/Mercurial_Georgia
Summary: WIP that I might finished before the end of this century, maybe.





	The Sleeping Beauty of Stark Kingdom

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted as comments around Dec. 4th, 2008 06:45 pm for the Fairytale prompt at cap_ironman.

In the valley of a southern coast, there was once a small kingdom that thrived on trade and innovation. The King pioneered airships that ran on water and the heat of the sun. The Queen was the respected diplomat that negotiated the treaty that shared developments across the union.

Their heir, Prince Anthony, was handcrafting walking dolls for his playmates when he was eight, built the model of a shark that swam like the real thing when he was twelve...and was experimenting with mechanical wings before his fifteenth birthday. He was very well loved by those who knew him, but gradually he became withdrawn, preferring the company of his toys and tools to his increasingly frustrated friends.

On Anthony's sixteenth birthday, he could barely walk. He spent the ball held in his honour on the royal balcony. He raised toasts after toasts of champagne in a steadily weakening gesture, though he had barely drank. Before the dance floor was cleared, Prince Anthony had to be carried back to his chamber.

Even before Anthony was born, there was this family of scientists renowned as the Fantastic Four. They were the specialists of science that bordered on magic. They've found ways to transmit whole libraries of information across the globe using light, so long as there was something to reflect the patterns along. They lived in the submersible, flight-capable, Baxter Boat, sailing always through the veins of the land, up until the birth of Mr. and Mrs. Fantastic's first child.

The Fantastic Four was originally the liaison between Stark Kingdom and and the Domain of Dr. Victor Von Doom, an 'alchemist' who was once the inseparable childhood friend of Mr.Fantastic. Somewhere along the way, all went sour, and now with a baby to care for, the Fantastic Four seeks a more stable environment as their permanent home.

The King and Queen of the Stark Kingdom was delighted to take in the family of scientists.

Dr. Doom watched the building of Baxter Tower through the eyes of his cyborgnetic beetles, and began to set up what he thought would be a most fitting revenge.

\----

The King and Queen does not believe in magic, but were too polite to refuse the gift of Luck from this little girl in red who had looked into the cradle of their newborn, and asked them if they had any wish (they had none). The mysterious arrival (and parting) of the strange child was soon forgotten, when the opened doors of the grand entrance snapped back sharply against the wall behind them, announcing the presence of Dr. Victor von Doom.

Later, Franklin Richards, who was only two at the time (but already walking and reading), would remember how he could hear his father breathing several feet above where Franklin was (under the table, clutching the boot of his mother with the hand that wasn't clutching his toy car).

"Congratulations on the birth of your beautiful baby." Dr.Doom bowed, the eyes behind the slits of his metal mask obscured by the dip of his green hood.

"Thank you," said the King.

"I regret my lateness as I was not aware of this gathering until yesterday, perhaps you are in need of a more reliable messenger."

The Queen stepped forward, "I regret the misunderstanding, Victor, but we had remembered that you had no interest in social gatherings where there will be no business at all."

Dr.Doom smiled behind his mask, arching out one hand in genial disagreement, "but oh, the birth of your heir is important business indeed," he produces from under his cloak, an acrylic tube containing a single sapling.

"This is victor valerius, a thornless rose that could grow in the hard soil of Baxer Courtyard. I still remember the days Valerie and I had hid among the rosebushes when we were children, whiling away afternoons drinking fragrant rose tea."

The Queen almost reached out for Victor, while The King accepted the cylinder, and there were a slight brightness in Reed Richard's eyes. All three had remember Valerie and Victor when they were all younger, when she was alive and very good for him. Her death had isolated Victor and started the rift that will eventually end his friendship with his other remaining friend.

Perhaps someone should have said something other than thank you. Perhaps the two families should have found time to try and reconnect with Victor von Doom, or at least investigate what he has now become, but that night, Dr.Doom left and did not look back. It would take a long time for his revenge to show, but part of his satisfaction in the years that followed was knowing that it inevitably will.

\----

The sapling becomes a shrub, then grew tree-like and bloomed pale pink flowers, that deepened towards red by its fifteenth year. Winter was longer that year, the days shorter, and Spring brought with it a mist. The haze in the skies thickened until the airships began to have trouble staying up due to the low visibility and the lack of sufficient solar energy.

On the night before Anthony was a month old, a beetle had crawled into the sheets of his crib, and broke the skin over the baby's heart, just a prick for a doll drop of blood. The baby cried but his nursemaid knew naught what was wrong, and within minutes of gentle rocking within warm arms, the baby was asleep again. When the nursemaid turned off the light, it flew back to the lab of Dr. Victor Von Doom with the final ingredient that will complete the curse.

As victor valerius grew, it drew its strength from Prince Anthony, who hid his gradually weakening constitution from even his closest friends until he could barely walk. Its roots reached deep into the bedrocks and springs of the valley, its fragrance filled the whole kingdom, and finally, in the morning after the Prince's sixteenth birthday, no one woke up. They will sleep for years, within their closed off world, and they would have slept obscured for a hundred years, had Victor von Doom not mispronounced the terms of his spell.

Dr. Doom's fitting revenge for the Kingdom of Innovations and the Fantastic Four, was to put them into an enchanted sleep (he was no petty murderer), and to hide the kingdom for over a hundred years, whence upon waking they shall all be completely primitive in relations to their new contemporaries.

Possible cont'd with Steve;

In the ten years that followed, the world would abandon The Stark Kingdom, for in the year after its sleep, there would be a coup in one of the new democracies that would replace its parliament with with military rule. By Year Five there will be a quagmire of a war that swallowed up the souls of artists and consumed the engineering minds of the new century like indifferent fodder. It would have seemed to many that all the world could create and dream of was destruction, were it not for one Steve Rogers.

Steven Rogers was raised the only child of his family in the most industrial town of a small northern country. He was unfortunate in that he lost his parents shortly before coming of age, and fortunate in that he finished childhood in the era of the reforms. He remembered being loved by his parents, and he was taken in by his community who prepared him for a place in the world that meant he wouldn't go hungry or fear the lost of dwellings the way many before his generation had throughout their lives. When the threat of the war came to his town in the caravan of killers who took the sacrifice of half the police troops to stop, Steven Rogers packed only what he needed, and went to see The Sorcerer Supreme.

...and I'm stuck, and already breaking the rule of fluff.

ETA Dec 10:

\- The Great War; I want to put in a Great War, because it's part of Steve's origin story, and, to me, when a Kingdom disappear, there will be political consequences. Unfortunately the intro made it sound like people dropped the issue because they were preoccupied with the Great War, when the Great War was started by the disappearance.  
\- Part 1 Ends with Dr.Doom, so:  
The Stark Kingdom became a dead zone to all traffic. No one can see beyond their own hand within the fog of the valley, and radar returns a swarm of signals that made no sense. All who wandered in was lost, and those who were fortunate will wander back out, not having seen anything but fog, a fog sometimes rich with an intoxicating fragrance that addled their thoughts.  
\- Captain America was part physical prowess, part strategic competence...and quick cleverness, and part inspiration, "Together we will win!", and being a shining model of morality in times of trouble.  
\- So fairytale Steve...how do I do capture the essence of the original without completely copying?  
\- I thought about having Steve traveling the country, leaving inspirational little sketches all over the place, like, inspirational propaganda, but I want there to be something else.  
\- I thought about Dr.Strange advising Steve to break the curse and Stark Kingdom will end the war, but that seem to simple. I really didn't like the MA Iron Man's heavy handed Good Corporation Save The Day message, and I sure as heck won't use it in my writing. If Steve doesn't know about the curse though, I don't know how to write him kissing someone UNCONSCIOUS.  
\- Sickly but Conscious Tony: The rose envelopes Stark Kingdom into an enchanted sleep, and it is also the rose that cloaks it in a fog so none will interfere. The rose grows in the soil and under the sun, but its magical influence is drawn from Tony's own life. This was why Tony became weaker and weaker when the rose started effecting the Stark Kingdom.  
\-- Therefore, Prince Anthony is NOT under the same kind of enchantment that puts the rest of the Kingdom to sleep. Rather, the enchantment exhaust him. Dr.Doom has tied him to the rose, so like the rose, Tony wouldn't age, not for a hundred years, but he'll be too exhausted and he'll drift in and out of a coma.  
\-- Therefore, Tony's lot truly is of the suck, but he can wake up when Steve finds him, but remains weak until the spell breaking kiss...which would tie Tony to Steve instead of the rose?

ETA Dec 11 Universe Note:  
\- This is indeed steam punk, what if Reed Richards Wasn't Useless, if the fictional geniuses were real and affects the world beyond battle bawls.  
\- Howard and Maria Stark is in the same decade as the Fantastic Four and Dr.Doom. At one point they were all peers on first name basis.  
\-- Therefore, Reed Richards would not be a colleague of Tony Stark, though Reed wouldn't treat the precocious Tony like a child.  
\-- Tony Stark grew up in the company of Franklin and Valeria Richards, so he'll be more well-rounded  
\-- Stark family is still emotionally aloof, but less sinisterly so. Howard Stark is not a Bad Abusive Daddy, but an absentee-ish one because running Stark Kingdom AND inventing stuff is time consuming, and his personality is a little like Reed Richards.  
\-- Obadiah Stane is the not!regent that Tony Stark's care would still be charged with because his parents are running the Kingdom, and the Fantastic Four have their own jobs and their own families.  
\--- Stane was removed from Tony's life when Tony was 14, there might or might not have been a Thomas Seymour incident.

New Note 2017 August: The Stark Kingdom is trapped in a spell powered by Tony that also keeps him asleep, I don't know if all the Fantasy Four are in there as intended by Dr.Doom, but I do know now that Steve will not be be saving Tony by himself and with a kiss. In the original fairytale, the prince has never met the Dude, She's In A Coma, and Disney had the wisdom to have them meet first so the kiss would be less creepy.


End file.
